


rooms of broken glass

by jinyoungstuan



Category: GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 20:07:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18301076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinyoungstuan/pseuds/jinyoungstuan
Summary: You can think of it as a joke, a pun told on a very weird timing and even weirder occasion;An actor walks into a garage and meets a driver.This kind of a joke lacked a punchline, however, so no one laughed.





	rooms of broken glass

**Author's Note:**

> Very high-key inspired by Murakami's Drive my car; also, hello, it's been a while

_“Much is hidden from the eyes of men, because did they know everything their hearts would no longer be at peace. Knowledge kills joy, therefore think well what you are doing, or someday you will repent. But if you will not take my advice, then truly I can show you the secrets of the night. Only you will need more than a man’s courage to bear the sight.”_

_“The Young Man Who Would Have His Eyes Opened”, Estonian fairytale_

You can think of it as a joke, a pun told on a very weird timing and even weirder occasion; as something that was supposed to make everyone burst out in wild, uncontrollable laughter. Or maybe as a beginning of a strange romance story, one that should’ve made hearts swoon and people cry, your very own fairytale of modern times.

_An actor walks into a garage and meets a driver._

It lacked a punchline, however, so no one laughed, and it wasn’t even a love story, well, at least not a very romantic one.

It was somehow funny, but at the same time, it kind of wasn’t – and Jinyoung thought that it could be the summary of his entire life.

 

“Only a few scratches, so if there won’t be any other problems, I’ll get it done by Thursday.” Yugyeom concluded, lifting his head from a hood of a car. “You might need to change the tires soon though, but there’s no rush with that, the old ones will still do their job for a while. Brakes work fine.” His voice was rough and heavy, a living proof that his most beautiful years were spent in various garages fixing cars, breathing gas. Jinyoung, sitting on a chair a little bit further from him in order not to stain his brand new suit, still managed to see his hands with black stains of car oil. “Anything else, hyung?”

“You could set it on fire on my behalf.” Jinyoung suggested humorously, but the joke was dry and not funny, resonating through the place like a creepy echo.

Yugyeom always said that his jokes reminded of funeral somehow; it had the same atmosphere, but this time he didn’t pick on it, cleaning his hands into his jeans, not caring about ruining them at all. “How old is this car exactly?”

“The Hyundai Genesis is a four-door, five passenger, rear-wheel-drive luxury sedan manufactured and marketed by Hyundai since 2008.” Jinyoung sing-songed the text he had stuck in his head so well he could’ve spilled it without batting an eyelash even woken up in the middle of a night even years later. Yugyeom only rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, we get it already, you endorsed it back in the day. And I know when the model was _released_ , I know some things about cars.” His grin became a little cocky and Jinyoung wanted to smack him, but the guy kept his distance, probably feeling it. “I’m asking when did you _get_ it.”

Jinyoung thought a little, then shrugged. “Four, five years ago, I’m not sure. My agency got it leased for them for driving to schedules and after the initial contract ended we bought it for ourselves.”

“We?” Yugyeom repeated, feeling the syllables escaping his lips slowly, as if they wouldn’t want to be brought up. “You mean the agency or you and—“

“Anyway.” Jinyoung interrupted, looking at a clock on a wall. “I kind of need a driver, since I can’t drive anymore for the time being. Maybe you know someone who wouldn’t be eager to kill a good old B-list actor in a car crash for some cheap headlines?”

A case in point, Yugyeom thought, Jinyoung’s sense of humor _was_ pretty terrible. “You’re twenty-eight, stop talking like you’re a grandfather.”

“When you debut being seven years old, I’d say twenty-eight is like late seventies of regular people. So, how about that driver? My agency said they’re going to cover all the expenses, but they probably won’t give much money anyway. Things these days aren’t exactly in my favor.”

“I do know a guy, I’ll asking him to come on Thursday. He’s not exactly a driver by profession, but I’m sure he won’t mind some extra money.”

 Jinyoung’s voice changed to a completely different one, the one he always used in business meetings; calculative and slightly curious. “How old is he?”

“Mid or late twenties, I never asked specifically, you know I don’t pick my employees by their resumes. He drives well and I haven’t heard any complaints, but that being said… He’s a great driver, but…”

“But?”

“How should I put it…” Yugyeom trailed off, scratching his head. “He has a weird personality. Nothing harmless, just. Weird.”

“For example?”

“Doesn’t talk much, and if he does, it’s only a few words. Smokes like a chimney.” Yugyeom started naming the sins of the guy, even counting it on his fingers, as if afraid to miss one. “Almost never smiles, sometimes quite tactless as well. Not the cutest type out there.”

However, Jinyoung wasn’t taken aback by this, deep inside he was expecting something way worse. “It’s okay. If he was cute it would be burdensome. If he kissed my ass for a few bills more, I probably wouldn’t like that either.”

“Then I guess we’re settled. All these things aside, I trust him, so there shouldn’t be any unpleasant incidents.”

Jinyoung, standing up and getting ready to go, laughed at the ambiguity of this statement. “Unpleasant traffic incidents or?” He asked, opening his wallet to pay Yugyeom for the work he was about to do on his car, but the younger, as always, pushed the money away, rambling about how they were friends for the bigger half of Yugyeom’s life and he was taking care of the car just because he wanted, not expecting any money for it. “What is that guy doing besides driving, by the way? I don’t think you can live off being a full-time driver these days, unless you’re working for a huge ass company.”

“As far as I know, he survives off part-time jobs. Kids nowadays think it’s better, since you can leave anytime without much care.” Yugyeom suddenly chuckled, remembering that the guy should be older than him by a few years, definitely not fitting into _kids_ category. “I found him through recommendations as well, but since the business isn’t booming lately, I can’t hire him properly. He’s a decent guy, doesn’t even drink, at all. That’s hard to find these days.”

Jinyoung’s lips pursed into a tight line and he turned to go, saying, “See you on Thursday then, take care. And eat more, you’re as thin as a rail.”

 

Three days later, on a Thursday noon, Jinyoung’s white Hyundai Genesis was all fixed and polished, almost blindingly white color contrasting with dirty brown and grey tones of Yugyeom’s garage walls. The ugly scratch on the left side was gone, busted car lights were changed into new ones, the car itself was washed until every centimeter of it was sparkling – Yugyeom, even though sometimes too cheeky and full of bullshit, knew how to do his job.

While Yugyeom was taking care of the papers, trying to figure out how to write an invoice which was requested by Jinyoung’s agency, telling they wanted to pay for the repair works anyway, Jinyoung’s stare was focused on the white metal of the car, however not in an admiring way - more like in a way one would look at something they don’t really want in their lives, but put up with it because there’s no choice.

They bought it four years ago, Jinyoung actually knew the exact date. At first, they used to drive a lot, going on trips outside the city and long drives in Seoul; when they would stop at a red light, he always noticed how Jaebum looked at the sky, carelessly watching floating clouds or trying to count migratory birds.

It was when Jaebum was still alive.

It was him who picked the car out of all those put in a long list Jinyoung’s agency gave them. The list had tons of cars to choose from, but for some reason, Jaebum had his eyes on this one, and on this one only. He was stubborn, knowing how to push every button to get what he wanted – he was sure they need this particular Hyundai Genesis, the white one, even though there was a black one as well; Jaebum didn’t budge even at Jinyoung’s talks how impractical white color is.

By the time they had fallen into a loop of never ending misfortunes and Jaebum had gotten sick, there probably wasn’t any road in the entire country they hadn’t been on. Later, when Jaebum had passed away, Jinyoung went on rides alone, but they became less and less frequent, because he couldn’t bear the empty passenger seat next to him. Eventually, he didn’t leave the city anymore.

When Yugyeom’s cursing at the agency not leaving any guidelines for how to fill the documents finally made Jinyoung snap back to the reality, a guy entered the garage, and he assumed it was the driver.

Around Jinyoung’s height, medium stature, not too thin, but without any additional kilogram on himself either. Wide shoulders, dark brown, almost black hair, face oozing with cold serenity. Eyes sharp, evaluating Jinyoung probably just as much as the latter was, and sparkling almost the same way metal would. He was wearing a leather jacket, maybe a little bit too warm for quite a nice day of April, a T-shirt with a famous American rapper on it, black jeans and black sneakers. The guy didn’t say a word until Yugyeom finally gave up on the papers, returning from his parody of a small office, and introduced them to each other.

His name was Mark.

“Mark, this is Park Jinyoung, the guy I talked with you about. He wants to hire you.” Yugyeom told, voice and stare somehow pleading for Mark not to fuck up the opportunity.

“The actor.” The guy noted, opening his mouth for the first time and Jinyoung slightly smiled, finally understanding what his friend had in mind a few days ago – during the last five minutes Mark told approximately two words and even those managed to sound somehow sarcastic.

However, “the actor” Jinyoung just nodded, ignoring his antics. “Yes, the actor. The car is quite old, at least in Yugyeom’s opinion, so it has no GPS. Thought that I should warn you, since it’s not going to be that easy.”

Mark furrowed his eyebrows and for a split second it felt like he will start complaining, or at least roll his eyes, but instead he said, “It’s okay. I used to work in a mail delivery for quite a while, all the city maps are here, in my head.”

Jinyoung had to admit that he didn’t believe this in the slightest; Seoul was huge and it sounded a little exaggerated. “Well, let’s go for a test drive, then.”

“Where are we going?

Jinyoung thought for a while. They were in Nowon since Yugyeom always refused to move somewhere nearer the city center arguing that he wasn’t about to spend five times more money to survive in an area where a cup of coffee was around seven bucks. If you’re lucky, that is.

“Let’s go to Apgujeong, I need to take Yugyeom’s invoice to my agency anyway. Then we’ll stop in Yongsan for a while, and you’ll drive me back here.” Jinyoung told him all the needed addresses and got surprised that Mark never asked him to repeat those.

Yugyeom sent them off a little worried but didn’t say anything asides wishing them a safe ride. Mark took the car keys from Jinyoung, turned on the engine and put his sunglasses on, sparing a glance at him as if wordlessly asking if he was ready to go, but didn’t wait for an answer before changing the gear and slowly moving backwards out of Yugyeom’s workplace.

Mark indeed was a pro when it came to driving – even though his personality was rough, he drove with some weird softness to his motions. Roads were full due to lunch time for most of the white-collars, so they had to stop a lot, but Jinyoung barely felt it, Mark was hitting the brakes just as softly, without any rush, just with a calculated precision. On top of that, it seemed like he was completely relaxed, not succumbing to the fact that his future job depended on this; actually, it almost looked like Mark was more tense when he wasn’t driving, compared to when he was – even his face got softer, however, that didn’t make him talk more.

“You can turn some music on, I don’t mind.” Jinyoung said, breaking the silence when they were stuck at one especially long red light.

Mark didn’t turn to him, concentrated on the cars in front, even though they didn’t move at all and he knew they won’t anytime soon. The only background noise for a while was those annoying car horns from impatient drivers, but soon Jinyoung noticed how Mark’s eyes shifted a little to evaluate the music player of the car.

“An old model, should barely work. You don’t listen to music while driving?” He talked without any formalities, what kind of threw Jinyoung off, because he was always taught how to properly address anyone in any kind of situation, but the latter brushed it off as another weird trait of Mark’s, a trait that made it seem like he looked down on people.

Or Jinyoung specifically, he couldn’t tell yet.

“I don’t.” he admitted. “Nowadays, I only use it to play CDs with script recordings. Helps to practice my lines when I’m going to work.”

Mark didn’t respond to that and Jinyoung didn’t pester him anymore. He himself didn’t mind the silence and he wasn’t good at chitchats to begin with, if it wasn’t necessary, he more enjoyed being silent, in his own world with his own thoughts.

Just like Jaebum, he thought, for the first time realizing he was sitting in Jaebum’s usual place, the passenger seat. In order not to concentrate on it, he looked through the window and got himself wondering how it was possible for the world to look so different depending on where you were sitting in the car. His thoughts were gone as soon as Mark started driving again, passing a car that was driving too slowly for his liking.

“Can I ask you something?” Jinyoung said when they stopped in a parking lot that belonged to the agency. He was delaying the moment he had to finally get out of the car, so he blurted out whatever, however it wasn’t because there was a shitload of fans or reporters waiting for him – there were none, all these things belonged to the past. It was more because he just didn’t want to go and deal with his manager.

“I guess.”

“Where did you learn how to drive?”

Mark took his sunglasses off a little surprised, like he was expecting more complicated or unpleasant questions. “I grew up in a mountain area. It’s too much of a hassle climbing hills up and down a few times day, so all the people there usually have cars. Besides, due to the climate, all roads get covered in ice during winter, so even if you don’t want to, you have to learn how to drive well enough if you don’t want to crash into the nearest tree.”

“You can’t really learn how to parallel park like this in mountains though.” Jinyoung noted smiling, but Mark once again didn’t respond. “Did Yugyeom tell you why I need a driver?”

“Because you’re an actor who’s currently shooting a drama three times a week. You usually go there by yourself, since you don’t think it’s a great idea to spend time with simple mortals in subway and buses, or taxis. Recently you got into a small car accident and doctors aren’t allowing you to drive for the time being because you have vision problems.” Mark monotonously said, as if reading from a memo. Jinyoung wanted to argue about the _simple mortals_ part of his speech, because it wasn’t true, but didn’t manage to open his mouth. “And you were tipsy that night.” Mark added in the same manner, not showing judgement if there was any.

“My doctor said he sees early signs of nearsightedness and some other problems, so until they’re done examining me and I get a prescription for glasses, I’m forbidden to drive.” Jinyoung explained, ignoring the last words.

“I see.”

Soon after that, Jinyoung got off the car to take care of his papers. He didn’t take long, maybe thirty, forty minutes tops, if not even less than that, because his manager was a pain in the ass and Jinyoung didn’t want to spend a lot of time with him. When he returned, Mark was sitting in the car almost in the exact same position Jinyoung left him in, as if he hadn’t moved at all.

Jinyoung then started discussing Mark’s salary. It wasn’t huge, because the agency didn’t want to spend loads of money on a problematic actor, as media kindly described him, since he was bringing more damage than profits to them. Jinyoung’s name was quite well-known to the public, mostly due to his past roles in movies and dramas when he was that cute nation’s first love; but for a few past years he hadn’t gotten any bigger role, having to enjoy even the smallest ones in the supporting cast – these days even having a driver was a luxury.

“The drama I’m working on right now shoots my scenes mostly in the evening, so you’ll have free mornings. I always try to finish before midnight, but if I need a lift later, I’ll either pay you a double amount or just catch a cab. All my free days are your free days as well.”

“Works for me.” Mark slowly nodded before starting the car engine. “Anything else?”

“No.” Jinyoung shook his head, fastening his seatbelt. “Actually, yes. Don’t smoke in the car anymore, I can’t stand the smell.”

Mark gave him a half-smile before leaving the parking lot, as if pleasantly surprised that Jinyoung noticed something, but at the same time as if slightly amused by such a mismatch between the actor’s words and actions. “You’re complaining about cigarette smell, but drive being drunk.”

No one in their sane mind would’ve hired Mark after this kind of remark, but maybe Jinyoung wasn’t in his sane mind either, because later, when they were stuck in a traffic jam on their way to Yongsan, he told that Mark’s shift starts tomorrow at 4 PM.

 

Starting from the very next day, Mark became his official driver. Every Monday, Tuesday and Friday he was supposed to be waiting for the actor to come out of his apartment building at 4 PM sharp; then he would drive Jinyoung to a shooting location, usually the same creepy abandoned house the horror drama was filmed at.

Even though Jinyoung didn’t have a lot of lines there and his character was supposed to be killed off soon enough, he would always diligently rehearse his text in the car – it was a deeply ingrown habit, to play various CDs with the entire script recorded, only with blank spaces for Jinyoung to fill in with his voice.

Mark never said a word about that, and Jinyoung couldn’t tell whether he hated this part of his work, having to listen to the actor repeating the same ridiculous and cheesy lines over and over, or was simply indifferent to all of it. No matter how loud Jinyoung spoke or even screamed his lines, Mark always acted like he didn’t hear it. Or maybe the driver really didn’t – he was hard to read, but for some reason, Jinyoung wasn’t bothered by that; Mark’s indifference felt somehow refreshing.

After this particular drama was done and the cast members told him their fake goodbyes with a little party on the set, more out of politeness than real friendliness, because Jinyoung never considered his colleagues friends, he got another gig. Another small role in some crime drama; the role of a doctor wasn’t huge, but at least it was a fixed one, the drama seemed promising and offering a decent pay. Mark kept driving him to the new shooting place just as silently as before, sometimes it was so silent in the car Jinyoung would doze off until Mark’s rough hand shaking his shoulder would wake him up, the car stopped next to his home.

Once, two months into working for him, Mark broke the silence first, what was some sort of a miracle, considering the fact that Jinyoung couldn’t even remember if the guy had ever initiated a conversation himself before.

It was an early beginning of July, a tiringly hot and humid day threatening to end in a thunderstorm, so typical for Seoul. Mark’s usual leather jacket was changed into a simple white short-sleeved shirt, one hand resting somewhere in his lap and another one carefully clutching the wheel, when he unexpectedly opened his mouth. “I have a question.”

Jinyoung lifted his head from a book he was reading a little surprised, but he thought Mark was going to ask about a raise in salary or something else similar, so he told, “Go ahead, then.” already rehearsing a negative answer. Not that he didn’t want to give Mark a raise, the agency simply wouldn’t have let him, especially since the problem with Jinyoung’s driver license wasn’t getting anywhere yet, and Mark was already working for him longer than it was initially intended.

However, Mark seemed to be having something completely different in mind. “Why did you become an actor?”

It caught Jinyoung off guard, it was the question he himself lately was trying to find an answer for. He thought about how much he should tell Mark, whether to be completely honest or not; but even though he knew that the driver probably would’ve taken any answer without asking more than Jinyoung would’ve told, none of the “standard” reasons seemed to fit.

He started his acting career being barely seven years old, landing a commercial deal with some washing powder company which needed an adorable kid to smile at his fake mom in front of the camera while she would be praising the product. The casting director for that campaign was his mom’s high school best friend, so it was no surprise that she contacted their family first. The commercial was tremendously successful, because kid Jinyoung always knew how to smile and be adorable, and slowly, other offers were starting to flood him.

All of them were gladly accepted by his parents and a year later Jinyoung was probably the most famous eight year old in South Korea.

He became a child actor, debuting in some ridiculous soap opera that was broadcasted on weekend mornings, but even _that_ hit the jackpot. Casting offers were doubling and tripling, Jinyoung was making a name and already had a solid bank balance. Most of teen girls went crazy for him when he was fifteen, the main lead in some angsty teen drama about first love, arguably the last successful work of his. Later, he decided to focus on his education – a little publicity stunt to cover up his deteriorating relationships with his parents and managers of that time.

“Actually, I was really into football during my school years.” Jinyoung smiled, returning to the memories he had buried somewhere deep inside. Mark didn’t show any reaction to this entire story and maybe he wasn’t even going to, but Jinyoung continued talking anyway. “At first I was so fascinated by the game, I thought of giving up on acting and getting into a university that had a decent team or something, but turned out I was too average for that.” He bitterly laughed, the letter of rejection from university that focused on sports education still vivid in front of his eyes. “And then I just thought that why not, let’s return to doing what I knew how to do the best – being a puppet in front of the cameras. Got into some acting department immediately, the names of the dramas and movies I was in worked better than any entrance exam. Later I had to admit it’s actually fun, to be someone else for a while and return to your actual self after the class ends.”

“Pretending to be someone else is fun?” That was the only reaction to this waterfall of words Jinyoung got from his driver.

“If it’s temporary, yes.”

“Have you ever had thoughts that… I don’t know, that you don’t want to return to yourself or something?”

Jinyoung had to think for a while before answering, but his final response was clear and firm, albeit bitter and sad. “Well, there’s no other place for us all to come back to, is there?”

He didn’t have any more schedules that day, the morning shooting session had been finished early and they were heading home, but Mark made his jaw fly open when he nonchalantly drove past the turn to Jinyoung’s neighborhood, continuing the journey to an unknown destination.

Mark during this entire period of working for him never made any mistakes, never got lost or simply skipped a turn, they were using the same route for months already, so it was pretty clear it was intentional. Jinyoung suddenly felt frozen, unable to even ask what was going on. For all he knew, Mark could’ve been a psychopath plotting to kill him or something.  

“Maybe it’s not exactly my business,” Mark said after a while. “But I’m interested. Why are you always alone?”

“Why do you think I’m always alone?” Jinyoung asked, voice a little shaky. “And where are you taking me?”

Mark shrugged. “I can tell that much after four months of working here – no friends, no lovers, nothing. And we’re going off route for a while, to celebrate the weekend if you will. No worries, I won’t charge you for that, nor am I going to kill you somewhere in a secluded forest, relax.”

It didn’t make Jinyoung calmer, but at least he wasn’t contemplating about jumping out of the car in the middle of a highway. He leaned back in his seat again, in deep thoughts. “When I think about it, it’s been a long time since I called someone a friend. Of course, I had friends during childhood and all that stuff, but it seems like I stopped making friends when I grew up. The ones I had slowly drifted apart, even Yugyeom appears like once a year or two, if I don’t need his help, and I just didn’t… make new ones. Especially after marriage.”

It was the first time Jinyoung saw Mark surprised and caught off guard, even though he tried not to show it. “You’re married?”

“Was.” Jinyoung chuckled at the confusion in Mark’s face. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard about this. A former top actor gets married, and out of all things, he marries another man in a private wedding ceremony overseas – tabloids had a field day with this. My father told I’m a disgrace to our family.” Jinyoung was smiling saying all this, as if spitefully happy about his dad’s reaction.

“I’m not really interested in celebrities, so I didn’t know. I skip gossip pages in newspapers, waste of time.” Mark sounded humorous, something that also didn’t happen that often. “A full house, isn’t it? A pressured child actor turns into an even more pressured teen actor, takes a hiatus and comes out as gay with his husband, then gets his driver license taken away because of drunk driving disguised as vision problems. You’ve really done it all. Anyway, when did you get married?”

“When I was twenty-two, so… Six years ago?” Jinyoung counted it in his mind, feeling how some details were already dusty and on the verge of being forgotten. “You don’t drink, right? Why?”

Mark shook his head, pulling the car over in some rest area far away from the actor’s neighborhood; actually, at this point Jinyoung didn’t even know if they were still in the city. “I don’t. It just seems like my body refuses alcohol.”

Jinyoung had a feeling that Mark’s tactlessness and bluntness were contagious, or maybe he was just triggered by talks about his marriage. “Was it your dad or your mom?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who loved their bottles a little bit too much and caused that?”

“Neither of them but fuck you.” Mark told, but it didn’t look like he was offended at all. On any other occasion and circumstances, if it wasn’t Jinyoung he worked for, he probably would’ve been fired months ago, especially for talking like that, but the actor didn’t really care. “What happened to your husband?”

“Died.”

“Shit, I’m sorry.” Mark’s voice noticeably changed, for a short moment even showing compassion and pity of some sorts; clumsy ones, as if he wasn’t used to feel such emotions for other people, or to feel something in general for that matter. “I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay, you don’t read gossip. What about your family, though? Where are they?”

Mark didn’t respond for a while, fingers impatiently tapping the wheel. “Can I smoke here?” He asked, even though Jinyoung had clearly told that he can’t stand the smell. However, that day they were breaking all the rules anyway, so Jinyoung gestured him to go ahead, focusing his stare on the sky, which was getting dark grey, showing the first signs of the upcoming storm. Mark rolled down the window, took a pack of cigarettes out of his jeans’ pocket, placed one in between his lips, and a few moments later a poof of smoke came out of his mouth. “My father left when I was eight, I never saw him after that. I heard talks that he still lives somewhere in Seoul, but I never searched for him. My mom got married again, and when I became of legal age, I ran away. Not that my stepfather was terrible or something, he’s actually pretty cool, well, maybe a little too stuck up and proper at times, but I just didn’t want to be around them. And friends… That’s where we’re similar, I guess. I don’t have them either.”

“Why?”

Mark didn’t respond, for some reason taking it as a rhetorical question that didn’t need an answer, and kept looking in front of himself, so Jinyoung thought it would be a pity to stay in silence after this whole streak of honesty. “The last time I had a friend was two years ago. Maybe not exactly a friend, just something very similar to that. He was my age, a nice guy. We used to meet for drinks every few weeks.”

“How did you meet?”

“He was sleeping with my husband.” Perhaps it was the simplicity of the answer, the neutrality in this statement without any emotions attached, that made Mark look at him to check if he wasn’t messing around. “They had a fling that lasted a few months, no longer than a year.”

“How did you know all that?” Mark asked. “Are you that type to be so controlling that you ask photos every hour if you’re not together, or do you put cameras in all the teddy bears you gift?”

Jinyoung found the idea of this amusing, but he had to deny this misconception. “In showbiz there are no secrets, even if you think you’re all secretive and shit, someone always knows. The guy was a junior script writer for a movie my husband was acting in. I guess it didn’t take long for people to realize why a junior script writer spends so much time in the lead actor’s trailer.”

“So the fact that your husband was sleeping with him wasn’t an obstacle for you to become friends?” Mark finished his cigarette and threw the butt of it outside, his motions followed by a heavy cough.

“It was quite the other way around. I became friends with him _because_ my husband was sleeping with him. I kind of wanted to know… To understand why he cheated on me with him.”

“Wasn’t it hard? To drink and talk with a person who fucked your husband?” Mark’s vocabulary still didn’t know terms coddled up in cotton candy, using straightforward names for everything.

“Of course it was. You start thinking things you don’t want to be thinking. You start remembering all the details you don’t want to remember. But I kept acting, that’s my job anyway. Once you start acting, it’s hard to stop, even if you’re suffering hell inside. It’s like musicians playing a difficult piece, you need to reach the climax of the melody for it to end properly, even if your fingers are bleeding.”

Mark took out another cigarette. “When you became friends… Was your husband still sleeping with him?”

“No, we all weren’t _that_ terrible.” Jinyoung’s answer was calm and collected as if he would be talking about a plot of one of his dramas. “We became friends after my husband died.”

“Was he your real friend? Or was it all an act?”

Jinyoung had thought about this before, but he always failed to find a definite answer without any _but_ s and _maybe_ s.  “Yes, and no at the same time. Eventually, I couldn’t distinguishing between those two things myself.”

Mark stayed silent, for a while it seemed like the actor’s words evoked some thoughts in his head. Jinyoung was a little naïve, expecting that the driver will open to him immediately, will offer his story in return to what Jinyoung had told. But the guy stayed true to his philosophy that if he didn’t ask for anything, he didn’t need to do anything in return either – in the end, he simply asked why Jinyoung became an actor, not to tell his entire life story.

“It reminds me of some movie.” Mark suddenly said, and his loud, louder than usual, voice resonated through the car and inside Jinyoung’s ears, making him shiver a little. “A generic melodrama about two broken people sharing their problems and then falling in love and desperately having sex, because… Just because they _do._ ”

Jinyoung chuckled, he had seen a fair share of these, even acted in a few. “For that to happen, I’d need to know your story. Rule one, I don’t sleep with people until they dump all their burdens on me.” It was a joke, but Mark looked sort of interested, and the silence was getting a little weird, accompanied only by the first big drops of rain that were starting to hit the car.

“There are no burdens, no story. No past.” Mark’s voice was firm. “Nothing you’d be interested in anyway. Not everyone lives in a mess like you do.” His voice became lower, the rough sound, reminding of a sandpaper brushing against wood, tickled Jinyoung’s ear. There was supposed to be a follow up to his words, there had to be one, because maybe indeed they were only two gloomy people with their souls broken each in their own ways.

And later Jinyoung would say that his brain was definitely drowned in that rain that started to pour in streaks as if someone would’ve spilled buckets, because no one just kisses their driver out of the blue – but he did.

It felt like he was drunk, or like they both were, even though it wasn’t even possible. Mark, if he was surprised, but probably not, since nothing surprised him anyway, didn’t show it, just leaned in a little. His lips were dry and rough, it scraped Jinyoung’s, but the latter liked it anyway. It felt realer, more alive compared to all those perfected lips he sometimes had to kiss on screen.

“We can’t do it here.” Jinyoung mumbled against Marks’s lips, when the latter’s hand not so ambiguously ran down his thigh, but he wasn’t sure what he was talking about; were they not allowed to enjoy their lives at least a bit, even if it wasn’t in the most graceful of ways?

These words amused Mark, he broke the kiss and looked the actor straight in the eyes – something he never did, as if he was sure that Jinyoung wouldn’t be able to keep an eye contact. This time it came off as a dare, a challenge of some sorts, but his answer was almost lighthearted, knowing that Jinyoung was held back only by ridiculous principles he created himself.

“Full house, remember?”

A smirk unknowingly curved one of Jinyoung’s lip corners up. Just like Mark said – a pressured child actor turns into an even more pressured teen actor, takes a hiatus and comes out as gay with his husband, then gets his driver license taken away because of drunk driving disguised as vision problems. Sleeping with his driver in the middle of a parking lot would’ve added even more spice to it.

_Full house, baby._

Jinyoung was the one to somehow maneuver them to the back seat; it was clumsy, because his leg got stuck at first and he thought Mark was going to break it while trying to free it, there was a lot of unpleasant cracking and squeaking coming from the leather seats. It was a little too hot not to feel suffocated and Jinyoung wasn’t sure whether it was because Mark now was only a few centimeters away from him, trying to unbutton his shirt, or because there was too little air to breathe to begin with, due to all the tightly shut windows and turned off air conditioner.

Looking back at it, Jinyoung didn’t even remember how Mark managed to get rid of his jeans so quickly and almost gracefully, considering how little space there was around them. That was one of the least important things that moment though, immediately gone out of his mind, because Mark had a way with his hands, not playing any games and stroking Jinyoung’s cock through the fabric of the latter’s boxers with some weird and unsettling clinical precision; in all the right ways for Jinyoung’s lips to start mumbling incoherent moans, at first quiet and even somehow shy ones, eventually Mark having to cover his mouth with his free hand.

Mark wasn’t a foreplay person, that he could’ve told already when he pushed his dick into Jinyoung, using his own saliva as lube, without any warnings and preparations. It hurt as hell, especially considering that Jinyoung hadn’t had sex for a long while, maybe years even, but nevertheless, he didn’t want Mark to stop, and the latter felt that, letting Jinyoung dig his nails into his back to ease the pain before Jinyoung’s mind went completely blank when Mark started thrusting into him.

At first it was slow, but somewhat rough, just like their relationship these months, making Jinyoung beg for more when he finally realized how much he had been yearning for human contact, these simple but still somehow meaningful moments. Mark was also a tease though, purposefully slowing his pace down even more, pulling out until he was barely inside Jinyoung and then thrusting back in the same torturing manner, making Jinyoung feel all the spectrum of emotions – from pain to fullness, to pleasure, to emptiness.

“Please.” Jinyoung breathed out when Mark pinned his arms above his head, so that he wouldn’t reach for his leaking cock, determined to give himself the relief if Mark kept teasing.

“Please what?” the latter whispered into his ear, thrusting deep and making Jinyoung arch his back. “I can’t do anything until you tell me what you want, baby.”

“F-fuck.” Jinyoung whimpered, feeling the familiar warmth pooling in his abdomen and then passing away as Mark pulled out again, definitely on purpose. He felt like he was about to explode if he didn’t get what he wanted. “Faster.”

Mark didn’t seem very impressed by this, but in the end, he saw what kind of mess Jinyoung was under him, pinned down on his own backseat, too sensitive to any touch, so he started thrusting, faster and faster, his own moans accompanying Jinyoung’s careless curses. The actor cummed not so long after, streaks of his semen making a mess on his stomach and on Mark as well. The latter was far from orgasming and Jinyoung felt a little ashamed for not being able to last longer due to the lack of sexual activities, so decided to take care of this in another way.

Mark’s eyebrows slightly rose because the actor seemed a little too bold pushing him on the seat, there was barely any space for them to move freely, but he didn’t mind this turn in the events as Jinyoung placed his lips on Mark’s hard cock and gave it a few licks to see if he was into that.

The way Marks closed his eyes and placed his hand on the nape of Jinyoung’s neck, forcing him go deeper, showed what he thought about it better than any words.

Frankly speaking, Jinyoung had a mouth of an expert hooker, sucking, licking and teasing as if his pay depended on it. The lewd sounds he was making trying to take it in as deep as possible didn’t take long to put Mark back in the mood and make him feel like he was floating. The cheeky eye contact Jinyoung gave him a few minutes later, trying to swallow his cum that was spilling all over his mouth to his chin, left Mark breathless.

For a second, he leaned forward, maybe to do something, stroke Jinyoung’s cheek or whatever, but stopped midway, only to fetch a pack of napkins he remembered being in the backseat pocket to help clean up.

There was something bugging Jinyoung throughout all this, something he couldn’t describe when Mark was finally taking him home, as silent as it was usual to them; only when the guy wished him goodnight and reminded that he had a schedule tomorrow at 11 AM, Jinyoung finally realized.

After the first kiss, Mark didn’t kiss him anymore, not even once.

 

It continued like that for a while - Jinyoung would wake up, get ready for his schedules that somehow were busier than usual, one shooting was followed by another one, after that a few interviews, even some late night show hosting was added to responsibilities; by the time he would step outside, Mark was always waiting. Sometimes, Jinyoung would find cigarette butts in the ash tray of the car even though he nagged countless times at Mark to stop smoking, sometimes, there were coffee cups from a nearby coffee shop, the smell of just finished drinking espresso reeking from the driver.

Mark never greeted him, never showed that there was something more between them, waiting for Jinyoung to get into the car and fasten his seatbelt. They’d go to the location Jinyoung needed to be in for his shootings and Mark would spend hours driving somewhere as Jinyoung always insisted that he wouldn’t uselessly wait countless hours. Then, after getting a call, Mark always picked him up and they would go either to Jinyoung’s or his apartment.

It wasn’t like sex was the only thing that kept them together, obvious business relationship aside; sometimes they would simply hang out, like any people their age would, watching movies or reading books in silence, surrounded by Jinyoung’s boring monochrome furniture that slightly smelled of hospitals, or in Mark’s messy living room, which was actually the only room in the flat, full of instant food packages and empty beer cans.

One night, one of the many, after a ridiculously long live broadcast that at ended at 3 AM, they winded up at Mark’s place with Jinyoung pinned against the living room wall; it was sloppy and lazy, since they both were exhausted, however, even tired and wrecked apart by thrusts, he could hear Mark’s moans stopping and the guy suddenly telling, “Tell me about your husband.”

For a split second Jinyoung felt like in a poorly made sitcom – they were in a shabby apartment, their clothes were scattered on the ground without any order, his lover’s dick was still inside him, and Mark was asking about his _dead husband_.

He got out of Mark’s grip and turned around, leaning against the wall and facing the latter, arms crossed on his chest and stare screaming _“seriously, dude?”_. However, Mark wasn’t impressed by that at all, his gaze didn’t budge as if he was about to die if he didn’t learn what kind of person Jaebum was; the question was lingering in the air like a suffocating net thrown on them while Jinyoung was gathering his clothes from the floor.

_Doesn’t talk much, and if he does, it’s only a few words. Smokes like a chimney. Almost never smiles, sometimes quite tactless as well. Not the cutest type out there._

It almost felt like Jinyoung should’ve seen this coming.

He had to admit though, during the period Mark was working for him, he definitely thought about his late husband a whole lot more often than ever before. And maybe Jinyoung actually needed some sort of a therapy, to relive everything again to finally be able to let it go, so they ended up sitting on the floor of Mark’s balcony with glasses of cheap wine in their hands and yet another cigarette burning between Mark’s lips.

Jaebum was an actor, just like him, a very handsome and talented on top of that. It took only a few small supporting roles and photoshoots for low-budget local magazines for him to skyrocket into the stardom.

It was a typical love story for someone famous, they met in a photoshoot where everyone was ready to put out a physical fight that was inevitably going to happen between two top actors of that time – but none of that happened. They fell in love, and no matter how the media tried to turn them against each other for a good old juicy scandal, they never allowed it to happen – they never compared their abilities, roles, or how much money they made.

Jinyoung thought that it was it, _the_ love of his life, the one he had to act out in front of cameras so many times; he loved Jaebum unconditionally, without any _but_ s and _what_ _if_ s, the feeling was mutual and eventually they decided to get married, causing an uproar both in the industry and their families – but none of that mattered.

Constant mocking headlines didn’t matter, rapidly dropping drama and movie ratings didn’t matter, people yelling insults and telling them to screw off and get out of the country right into their faces somewhere in the streets didn’t matter. Jaebum’s palm never flinched in Jinyoung’s when they were sitting in front of the latter’s father, explaining their decision. Jinyoung didn’t bat an eyelash when he was cursed at with finest curse words right into his face by Jaebum’s mother.

Even after some time, when people thought it was “just a phase” and they should get sick and tired of each other, it didn’t happen. Partially at least. Jinyoung never looked at other people, other men, even though there was more than one occasion to do so. Jaebum, on the other hand…

It was never obvious, he never intended to let Jinyoung notice, but it was clear that sometimes he slept with other people. As far as Jinyoung knew, it started a year after their marriage and his husband had three affairs and maybe, if not for the unfortunate circumstances, there would’ve been more.

Jinyoung never felt not loved, despite casually sleeping around Jaebum was just as caring, loving and supportive husband he had always been, avoiding all the tacky clichés – smelling of unfamiliar perfume after getting back from his rendezvous, excessive phone hiding or stuff like that, but Jinyoung always knew anyway.

Call it his sixth sense or whatever, but he always felt when Jaebum would come back home after sleeping with someone else. Whom he slept with Jinyoung knew as well – it was always co-stars or someone from staff members, and it wasn’t anything shocking, considering that it was how Jinyoung met him as well. These kind of relationships usually lasted for a few months, until the project would be over and the relationship would end naturally.

Jinyoung didn’t know only one thing, he didn’t know it even now – and that was _why_ Jaebum needed other people. He could’ve understood one affair, one lover; slip ups happen and the entire entertainment industry was one big bed anyway, where one of the most trustworthy ways to the get famous was to fuck your way to the top, but two affairs, three? In a span of two years? That was beyond Jinyoung.

Of course, it felt like hell – it was too painful to even imagine Jaebum like that; it was so hard that there were moments when Jinyoung just wanted to openly ask him what on earth he was doing to both of them, or just simply get rid of him.

Jinyoung was jobless for quite a while at that time, already on the edge of madness and one evening, chopping vegetables for dinner, he thought how easy it would be, to simply stab Jaebum with this very knife so that he would shriek in pain much like Jinyoung was shrieking when Jaebum had “night shootings”, or to poison his food. Or do whatever other desperate dramatic people do to their cheating spouses.

“Is that what you did?” Mark asked, finishing his cigarette. “Did you kill him? Come to think about it, I’ve read some news a few years ago, about some famous entertainer killing someone. Was it you?”

“I thought you don’t read gossip.”

“It was in the crime section.”

But contrary to Mark’s guess, Jinyoung shook his head. “I didn’t have enough guts to actually do it, nor did I ever try. Two years into our marriage he got sick. Usual story – at first he thought it was just fatigue and fucked up eating habits, because he had insane overseas schedules. Turned out, it was terminal.”

Jaebum died after a year, but during the funeral Jinyoung couldn’t point out why exactly he was crying – because of grief or spiteful happiness that Jaebum had tasted the pain Jinyoung had been feeling for the past years, as bizarre as it sounded. Maybe that was the reason why he returned to his agency two weeks after the funeral, surprising everyone with enthusiasm to work again, but they all brushed it off as a widower trying to occupy himself with something so that he wouldn’t miss his husband.

“That other guy you mentioned,” Mark told, getting another cigarette from the pack he always kept next to himself. For the first time he offered one to Jinyoung, but the latter refused, snatching the pack out of Mark’s hand and throwing it away altogether. Mark shot him a glare but didn’t address it. “The one sleeping with your husband and whom you befriended. How did that happen?”

“How _what_ happened? How did they start sleeping together or how did I become friends with a person like that?” Jinyoung bitterly laughed and Mark simply shrugged as if trying to say he didn’t care which he will hear first. “He called me a year after Jaebum’s death.”

Mark cursed through his teeth, a little unbelievingly, this entire story starting to really seem like a low quality drama with barely existent ratings.

“And can you imagine,” Jinyoung continued, “I actually came to like him. Or pity him, I don’t know, maybe there wasn’t much difference to it.”

Jackson Wang was an enigma. Having captivating visuals and a personality even more so, able to act out almost every emotion possible in a matter of seconds and getting tons of offers to change his career path – and yet, Jackson always preferred to stay only a junior script writer. It seemed like he was trying to stay little and invisible on purpose, only with his name in the ending credits somewhere in the last line of them, where nobody would find him.

Jinyoung had heard about him, Jaebum had the main role in the movie Jackson helped to write the script for; or maybe Jaebum helped Jackson to help write it, Jinyoung himself didn’t understand the entire story when one evening he picked up his buzzing phone and he heard a familiar voice.

“I don’t know if you remember me, I’m… My name is Jackson Wang. Once I was a junior script writer for a movie your husband had a role in. I received… various kinds of help from him back then.” Jinyoung wanted to scoff, because indeed, the help was really _various_. “I have a favor to ask. A little selfish one, but I still hope you won’t say no.”

That favor turned out to be him meeting Jackson in one of the restaurants near Jinyoung’s agency to talk about something. Or rather _someone_ , because all they actually talked about was Jaebum. Jackson was careful, but at the same time incredibly openhearted, mentioning the dead man only a good hour and a few wine glasses into the meeting, always watching Jinyoung’s reaction.

But the latter was an actor, it meant absolutely nothing for him to fake a calm face, hiding all the thoughts racing inside his head and offering nothing but a light smile, having to reminisce all the things about Jaebum he tried to forget and listen to Jackson telling him stuff Jaebum had never told.

Jinyoung noticed that Jackson was too easy to read, ridiculously easy – it sometimes felt like if you looked Jackson straight into the eyes, you’d see right through him. No sharp edges, no bad intentions, just a suffering lover of a married dead man. Definitely not the type to stab you in the back, Jinyoung could’ve told that if he befriended Jackson before he started sleeping with Jaebum, none of it would’ve happened.

Once, Jinyoung asked if Jackson had a significant other. The man laughed, he already had a kid and was married, meaning that somewhere out there was a very brokenhearted wife and a marriage that was just as broken as Jinyoung’s was. Soon, Jackson clarified that he hadn’t been living with her for months and was in the middle of divorce process.

When tipsy, Jackson used to get a little too touchy, and Jinyoung couldn’t help but flinch and move away every time the guy threw his arms around his shoulders, never failing to remember that these were the arms that were touching Jaebum’s body too.

“He never knew how to hide his feelings, it was obvious that he was still grieving.” Jinyoung told. “After a few meetings my theory was confirmed.”

From what he managed to force out of Jackson, Jaebum suddenly cut off all the contact with him one day, not bothering to explain anything and changing his phone number; a little bit of math and Jinyoung realized that it was around that time Jaebum was informed about his illness.

When it reached its peak and Jaebum was permanently admitted to a hospital, among all the journalists and paparazzis who were forbidden to enter the territory, Jackson’s name was also put in the same list. Jackson knew what was happening, he was naïve but not dumb; it was hard not to know when Jaebum’s illness was discussed in every newspaper, but the separation was so out of the blue, Jackson still couldn’t get a grasp of it up until that day.

Jinyoung, even though kind of able to understand that feeling, couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry. Jackson knew Jaebum was married, and even if it was true love between them or whatever bullshit, in the end it was _Jinyoung_ who was always by Jaebum’s side, watching him slowly dying, he had gone through all of it alone, and Jackson…

He just _wasn’t there_ , even if that was Jaebum’s will. There was a huge difference between what they had suffered, but the situation was a little grotesque, since it looked like Jinyoung was trying to console Jackson about it rather than vice versa.

 

_“He was an outstanding man. Jaebum.” Jackson said, drunk almost out of consciousness, this time without any filters in his mouth. It was the second anniversary of Jaebum’s death, and they were in some sort of fancy restaurant; Jinyoung was pretending not to understand why Jackson’s eyes were red when they met and why he was so sad. “You must’ve felt extremely happy when he was still with you.”_

_“You have no idea.” Jinyoung smiled back to him while finishing a glass of wine, a little sarcastically, but the man’s drunken brain didn’t catch that. “I was so, so happy, and so… bitter.”_

_“Bitter?”_

_“I always was afraid of losing him.” He told, watching Jackson’s reaction, for some reason ready to push all the buttons to create a situation more slippery than ever before. “But then I just lost him, in a snap of fingers, and then I just felt really bitter.”_

_Jackson bit his lip, trying to concentrate, but he was clearly failing. “I think I know the feeling.”_

You don’t _, Jinyoung wanted to yell at him, but instead of that, he told only a calm and collected, “The hardest part was that I never really figured him out, you know? We knew each other for six years, three of them we spent married, I believed that we trusted each other, that we were friends, soulmates… But in reality it wasn’t like that, at all. How to put it… Like a selective blindness?”_

_“Blindness?”_

_“Maybe I was too blind to see some things, notice some tendencies, patterns. Maybe even though I_ looked, _I didn’t really_ see.”

_“I… I think I understand.” Jackson said, looking near tears and trying to keep the burning eye contact with Jinyoung. The attempt was unsuccessful._

_“How?” Jinyoung’s question was cold, colder than anything he had ever said to Jackson. “How can you understand?”_

_“Is that even possible?” Jackson mumbled, not really responding to the actual question, but sounding surprisingly sober. “To fully understand what another person is thinking or feeling. I feel like it’s not us who were blind.” Jinyoung’s heart made a somersault at that “us”, but he didn’t say a word. “If it’s blindness, then all people are blind with no exceptions. You can’t look at another person’s soul and expect to see everything. It just pains you when you can’t find all the answers. So I think that in order to understand others, we have to come to terms with ourselves first. If we want to see what a person is truly like, there’s no other way but to look inside our souls first. And besides, there are some things that are not meant to be seen, to be known. This kind of knowledge is dangerous.”_

_He fell asleep soon after his words and Jinyoung only threw a few bills on the table, not forgetting to make sure that a waiter would call a cab for Jackson. That was the last time they saw each other, but Jinyoung couldn’t fall asleep that night at all, Jackson’s words echoing in the emptiness of his apartment._

_There are some things that are not meant to be known._

“Did he contact you after that ever again?” Mark asked, letting Jinyoung’s tired body find leverage by resting his head on his shoulder. He let the actor stay like that, even though he never was the one to yearn for physical contact or softness first; but that night, it seemed okay.

“Yeah. He kept calling and offering to go out for drinks, but I always refused. I never called him myself and after some time, he stopped.”

“He probably doesn’t understand what happened.” Mark said, matter-of-factly. “Maybe he even feels hurt after such a sudden disappearance of yours.

“Might be.”

“Why did you do that though? You knew he was sleeping with your husband from the very first second, so when he confirmed it, there shouldn’t have been any surprise.”

“There was no reason to act anymore.”

“There was no reason to act, so there was no reason to stay friends as well?”

Jinyoung didn’t respond to that – something he learned from Mark, not to answer questions that weren’t urgent or didn’t have that much importance to the topic. He didn’t even know why on earth he was telling all of this to his employee out of all people, but they were sleeping together for quite some time anyway, and while there weren’t many strings attached, it probably was about time to face each other’s demons.

“To be honest,” Jinyoung told suddenly, watching how the first rays of sun were slowly coloring the navy blue sky dark orange. “I thought I need to teach him a lesson.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought of getting him in trouble. I planned to pretend being his friend and then ruin him, to hit where it hurts he most. It was more than easy – he was a funny guy when drunk, it wouldn’t have taken long to get him into a scandal. Then, his ex-wife probably would’ve used it against him in the court to make it difficult for him to see his kid. That would’ve been unbearable for him.” 

“Dark.” Mark noted, but Jinyoung couldn’t understand whether he was mocking him or not. “It was supposed to be a revenge for sleeping with your husband?”

Jinyoung shook his head. “More like something to occupy myself with and release my anger.”

“So you decided to ruin a person to let your anger out.”

“Pretty much.”

“But you didn’t do anything, did you?”

Jinyoung only laughed, finally standing up; his laugh sounded a little creepy, but he didn’t elaborate any more, saying that he needed to get back to his apartment and sleep a bit before going to a shooting for some commercial. He also told that Mark had a free day, he’ll be taking a cab.

When the doors were closed shut, only with the actor’s perfume lingering in the air, Mark could compare Jinyoung with Scheherazade from “One Thousand and One Nights”, cutting off his story in the most interesting part.

Mark didn’t care about broken hearts and marriages, not even cheating; he was interested in revenge and anger.  

 

Usually, Mark never entered the actual shooting locations, he just dropped off Jinyoung somewhere near them. Not because he wasn’t allowed or something, but more because he himself didn’t want to be questioned by a bunch of security guards about who he was and what he was doing there, and Jinyoung never had been late before – when the filming would end, he always waited for Mark to come at the exact previously agreed time.

But this time was different, the entire _day_ was different, the rainy October evening’s atmosphere was making everything a little unsettling – especially when Jinyoung wasn’t waiting outside at 9:40 PM after his shooting in a TV studio.

At first, Mark didn’t pay much attention to it, playing with a lighter inside Jinyoung’s Hyundai, but minutes were ticking, and the actor was nowhere to be seen. Mark tried calling him a few times, remembering he had Jinyoung’s number in his call logs, unsaved, however, the phone was turned off. So after a bit of hesitation, he decided that the best option was to just go search for the man.

It was a whole lot different from what he imagined TV studios being; Mark always thought that it should be like some sort of a beehive, people walking in flocks and someone constantly yelling commands, with glitter and used stage props scattered on every free centimeter of the ground and with security guards surrounding every moving person like a shield.

But now that the day was over, the entire building seemed to be completely empty as Mark was navigating through the place, trusting his sense of direction. He met only a few people walking down the corridors like sleepy, exhausted zombies, but none of them questioned what Mark was doing there. To them he probably was only a lost extra or something like that, or a new intern they didn’t know about, having to spend his night here doing the paperwork.

It might’ve been intuition or whatever, but when Mark spotted some door left open a little, with a dim lightning getting out into the corridor, he knew it was the right place, the room he was searching for. It seemed like some sort of a warehouse, or maybe it was actually a studio, full of decorations that reminded of a living room in an inexistent house, and Mark leaned against one of the walls, not wanting to startle Jinyoung who was standing completely still, looking at something, a painting or a photo of someone, he couldn’t really tell because of the distance.

Jinyoung’s face looked calm, scarily calm and almost blank, as he didn’t move nor looked like he was breathing, and Mark felt a little confused as to what he should do – the actor looked like he was in some sort of a trance. Fortunately, a stronger gust of wind coming from the open door forced a window in the place to close, and Jinyoung, flinching from the unexpected sound, turned around to face Mark.

“What are you doing here?” He asked, still looking out of it, stuffing his hands into pockets of his suit pants.

“It’s almost midnight. You’re two hours late.” Mark said and the actor awkwardly smiled, rubbing the nape of his neck, but still not moving.

“Sorry, I probably got carried away. Come in, don’t just stand there next to the door, there’s no one else here. It’s not like you’re going to take photos and leak all the details about a new drama to the media, are you?”

Mark chuckled at that, he couldn’t care less about TV shows and dramas, so a few moments later he was standing next to Jinyoung, trying to figure out what he was looking at earlier. The latter was quick to notice it and saved a few seconds of guessing by pointing at a wall in front of them.

It had tacky and ugly wallpapers, definitely old and used for the set only because someone had to get rid of them, so they threw it into the newest drama, hoping that cameras won’t focus on how hideous they actually were. There were some photos, framed and stuck to the wall, and Mark wasn’t sure what exactly he was supposed to look at, until Jinyoung nonchalantly pointed at one of them.

It was a photo of a young man, a quite attractive one, even though he was a bit too soft-looking for Mark’s taste. The man had brown hair and mischievous gaze, accompanied by a wide toothy smile, frozen in the frame looking like he was posing for a family portrait. It would’ve looked like a useless prop, just one detail of the set out many, if not for Jinyoung’s bitter smile, and then Mark realized.

“It’s Jaebum, isn’t it.” He told silently, like they were in some sort of a sacred place. Jinyoung nodded, watching Mark’s reaction as if he was enjoying it. “Why is this photo here?”

“They’re filming a spin-off for the drama Jaebum was starring in before his death. So he’s kind of… dead in the drama as well, hence the photo.” Jinyoung laughed a little, as if the thought of producers milking a death of someone for the sake of ratings would be amusing, not terrible. “They also thought that inviting his husband to be one of the leads will be pretty awesome and tear-jerking too.”

“At least it’s a lead role.” Mark said, taken aback. He couldn’t deny, he didn’t like to talk about Jaebum at all. It always felt as if his ghost was somewhere behind their backs and that scared Mark, despite all his cold demeanor. He didn’t like past, nor ghosts, especially when they weren’t his own.

Jinyoung only smiled, smile tired, but somewhat amused. “Better tell me what’s been bothering you this entire time. You don’t really know how to hide it when you care about something.”

Mark closed his eyes, trying to find appropriate words, but he knew he will fuck it up anyway, so he didn’t bother. “What really happened to that guy, Jackson?”

“You’re not bothered by the fact that I spent hours weeping over my dead husband’s photo while sleeping with you every other day, but you’re interested in what happened to Jaebum’s lover?” Jinyoung laughed, but his face became cold soon, ice cold and full of something that reminded of contempt. “After that night in the restaurant we never met again. You can look him up online, I’m surprised you haven’t done it yet. He’s alive and well, got promoted to a senior script writer in some broadcasting station. I didn’t do anything aside comforting him when he was crying his eyes out on my shoulder.”

Mark couldn’t deny, he breathed out in some certain relief after hearing that. It had been bugging him for a long while, those memories of the night when Jinyoung told him all the details about his messed up life, the actor’s weird laugh always sending shivers down his spine every time he heard it in the back of his head.

“Sometimes it just happens.” Mark suddenly said, looking at Jaebum’s photo again. “You kiss a wrong person, you sleep with a wrong one. People do all kinds of stuff to distract themselves from shit – even when we don’t know they need a distraction. Besides, even if his _body_ was sleeping with Jackson, doesn’t mean his _heart_ was. You can love one person and fuck another, there are various preferences and it has nothing to do with you, Jinyoung. It’s not your fault, Jackson was neither better nor worse than you. And you’re not able to change anything anyway.”

“What’s your story?” Jinyoung asked, conveniently ignoring everything that was spilling out of Mark’s mouth, dismissing even the fact that for the first time in months, his driver sounded completely honest and like he _cared._ “Got cheated on and went through some shitty psychological rehab for it? Don’t bother, been there done that.”

“No I wasn’t.” Mark told, turning to face him and leaning against the wall. A few poorly glued frames fell down and broke, but none of them cared. “I’m just a kid whose dad left when he was eight. You start asking yourself a whole lot of questions then – why me, why him. You start blaming yourself, because you know that it all started to go downhill when you failed that stupid kid audition for a washing powder commercial when you were seven to some kid who got in because the casting director knew his mother.” He made a pause. Jinyoung was looking right into his eyes flabbergasted, shocked by the reveal. “You decide that you’ll have your revenge sooner or later, but those thoughts eventually just pass by as if they weren’t even supposed to be born. It’s all a sickness that has no cure, you just have to swallow it and move on together with it. What flows, flows. What crashes, crashes.”

“And then you act.” Jinyoung finished. Mark’s words weren’t revolutionary, asides the fact that they were somewhat related in the past, one mere detail creating two so different destinies. It didn’t make him feel at ease nor like all of his burdens were lifted off his shoulders. But it did open a wound, a hole through which all the poison should’ve leaked, leaving him to finally heal.

“And then you act.” Mark agreed and then completely changed the topic, it was actually a bit ridiculous; but that who he was, if there wasn’t anything to add, he didn’t force it. “Your agency called me. Your manager said you’re getting your driver’s license back, he’s going to bring it to you tomorrow morning, so I guess my work here is done.”

Jinyoung took a second to digest this piece of information which felt like a slap to him.

Mark was this mysterious calming puzzle, distracting him all the time, and Jinyoung felt afraid of the parting. Not because he was afraid to drive again after long months of sitting in the passenger seat or losing a trustworthy, competent employee. It was because Mark was a lot of people to him all at once – a friend, a lover, some sorts of a therapist…

And maybe, someone with whom he would’ve liked to start over.

Mark didn’t comment on his terrified expression, just put his arm around Jinyoung’s shoulders, like they would’ve been friends since childhood and guided the actor out before someone realized that there still are people inside the building when there weren’t supposed to be any.

Mark drove him back home, spending the entire time in silence much like they were used to, and Jinyoung even fell asleep, sleep deep and undisturbed – something that never happened lately, waking up only when Mark shook his shoulder after reaching the apartment building he lived in.

The now former driver accompanied him up until Jinyoung had to search for the keys of his door, and then said, “Well, it was fun to work for you. Don’t forget to write a recommendation so that I wouldn’t stay jobless for too long.”

“That’s it?” Jinyoung said, all the sleepiness gone out of his mind.

“I gave your car keys back, is there something else I forgot?”

“Yes.” Jinyoung voice became more demanding, quite unusual to their everyday conversations. “I was actually waiting for _we need to talk_ or something like that.”

Mark didn’t bat an eyelash, yawning and telling, “And do we need to talk?”

Jinyoung sighed, mentally cursing and shaking his head at the guy’s unnecessary and faked obliviousness. Then, he decided to take the simple route, the one that always worked with people like Mark – the straightforward one, which the latter was probably trying to teach him all this time. “I want you to stay.”

“You don’t need a driver anymore.”

“And I don’t want you as my driver. I want you, as you, here, with me.”

Mark only chuckled a little; apparently it wasn’t so hard to make Jinyoung lose his calmness and all the proper and staged behavior he learned throughout the years. And this was the Jinyoung Mark saw that first day in the garage, hidden under layers of masks, the one he wanted to bring back to the surface instead of getting his revenge after accidentally meeting his nemesis whom he blamed for everything wrong in his life.

 

_An actor walks into a garage, meets a driver. They live happily ever after_ – that’s it, that’s the punchline. It does seem like a fairytale after all, with two chronically unfortunate men and a few appearances of past ghosts.

But Mark promised to keep those ghosts at bay, so Jinyoung doesn’t really care much.

**Author's Note:**

> if this sounds familiar, then you're right - it's an old fic of mine which was posted under a different username and later remixed into what we have now.


End file.
